Critical Essay by Martin Simpson

SOURCE: Simpson, Martin. "Chopin's "A Shameful Affair."" Explicator, 45, no. 1 (fall 1986): 59-60.

In the following essay, Simpson discusses images of nature and society in "A Shameful Affair."

Mildred Orme, in Kate Chopin's "A Shameful Affair," is a socially conventional and sexually repressed young woman who has come to the Kraummer farm to escape the sexual demands that were made on her in civilized, urban society. Chopin uses fertile nature imagery to show Mildred being drawn out of the realm of sheltered social convention and into a natural world that is rich with sensuous physical surroundings. Here Mildred is forced to recognize and struggle with her sexuality.

Mildred is obviously a …show more content…
While she is watching Fred fish, Mildred is standing very still and "holding tight to the book she had brought with her" (150). The book is a sort of life-preserver (a repression-preserver, rather), a symbol of civilization and social restraint. When she "carefully" lays the book down and takes into her hands the phallic fishing pole that Fred gives her, she has given in to her sexual instincts. The voluntary act of setting aside the book and picking up the pole symbolically foreshadows her willing participation in the passionate kiss that follows.

After she has unwittingly and temporarily surrendered to her sexual desires at the river, Mildred once again retreats into her customary repressive behavior. When she feels the first moment of shame after Fred has kissed her, she determines to return to her room in the farmhouse. She will be isolated from nature there, and she can "give calm thought to the situation, and determine then how to act" (151). Only when she is back on the "very narrow path" through "the wheat that [is] heavy and fragrant with dew" (153) is she able to admit to herself what Chopin has already shown to the reader in the scene at the river: she is partly responsible for Fred's impulsive kiss. Being greatly disturbed at this knowledge, she tells Fred that she hopes to someday be able to forgive herself (153).

Chopin's theme in "A Shameful Affair," the enlightened idea that sexual repression is harmful, is